From a commercial viewpoint, it is important to be able to evaluate the performance of content provided online, e.g., an advertisement (“ad”), game, music video, television show, etc. In this regard, it is common to provide a system for computer users to provide feedback by manually rating content, e.g., by selecting a suitable rating value (e.g. a number of stars). It is also similarly common to provide questionnaires or interviews as part of an ad effectiveness tracking scheme.
More recently, techniques for measuring a computer user's emotions, e.g., by facial features tracking or the like, have been incorporated into methods of evaluating the performance of video content. For example, an imaging unit, such as a webcam, can be used to capture images that contain the facial features of a computer user as he or she watches video content. The captured images can be processed to yield information about the computer user's emotions at certain points in the video, which provides valuable feedback as to the performance of the video.
The video and the captured images can be transmitted over the Internet, whereby the feedback can be automatically gathered from a plurality of remote computer users. For example, US 2012/0222057 discusses a system in which a video is embedded in a web-enabled interface that is arranged to collect mental state data for a computer user who watches the embedded video. The web-enabled interface itself can be distributed, e.g., by sending an appropriate URL to a plurality of prospective viewers.